Satellite communications have made communications accessible and available at any point in time from any point on Earth. Whether at sea, in the air, or on land, modern users demand continuous broadband connectivity for a variety of communications including telephony, internet, and television, as well as monitoring, command, and control. Applications demand various bandwidths and frequencies, as well as real-time, accurate, and quality communications.
In ship based satellite communications, antennas deployed on ships are subject to partial obstructions of the views of the antenna to the satellite(s). These obstructions are typically due to the ship superstructure, and lead to loss of signal and interrupted communications. In the case of communication with non-geostationary satellite constellations, two antennas are typically deployed on a ship and operated in an attempt to overcome such signal loss. Each of the two antennas must maintain a view to a satellite, and are operative to transmit to the satellite when the satellite is in view. When a satellite disappears from the view of one of the antennas, the other antenna must transmit to an appearing satellite in order to maintain signal continuity. However, if any of the antennas are prevented from receiving and transmitting due to obstructions from the ship superstructure, the signal will be lost. Deploying a third antenna on a ship may alleviate such signal loss problems, however, the large size of typical antennas leads to such antennas having larger obstructed views when deploying three or more antennas on a ship.